It was nearing midnight on a Tuesday my Freshman year. Music was flowing through the halls as rowdy 18-year-olds drank one too many shots preparing themselves for Tequila Tuesday. Even my very-Christian, non-drinking roommate from Texas was out somewhere. Not that I wasn’t a bit of a partier myself my Freshman year, but the snow report called for 15 inches and I had already decided my fate for the night.
I was slumped in bed under my duvet, comfortably watching some irrelevant binge-worthy show on Netflix.
“Haaaaaaannnnnnnaaaaaa,” a male voice called — one I could only anticipate was one of my closest guy friends —followed by loud banging on my door.
Maybe I’d pretend I wasn’t there. That I was asleep. I was most definitely not trying to go out.
“Fine, pretend you’re asleep, but we’ve got a hotel in Summit and you’re invited,” and I realized it was my friend Joe talking with a high level of sass.
I was up and out of my lofted extra-long twin bed before he could even stop knocking.
I swung open the door with luster, “I’m in.”
—
I let my Freshman naivety get to me as I packed, stuffing only a sleeping bag into my ski bag.
Four of the guys and I inched along on i70 in my friend’s two-wheel drive Toyota 4Runner. The roads were disastrous, un-salted, and un-plowed. Emmett drove grasping two hands on the wheel with the white of his knuckles bulging, occasionally smoking a hand-rolled cigarette in attempt to keep him alert and awake.
The back of the car was a different story — a box of wine was being passed between the three of us. We laughed, shared stories, talked about how excited we were for the next day’s snow.
I was smiling ear to ear, nothing could bother me — not my next week’s Geography midterm or the dumb boy trouble I was having back in Boulder. All I could concentrate on was getting to Arapahoe Basin.
“Alright, I think we can tell her now,” Joe said to Emmett. Being the only girl in the car, I knew they were talking to me and I knew, somehow, I had been played.
“Okay, so… we might not actually have a hotel room. Everywhere we called was booked. We’re going to stay in the parking lot.”
I started laughing, laughing hard. Maybe it was the wine or the one hit I had taken, but even this couldn’t bring me down.
“You guys, that’s awesome. I’m laughing because it’s funny that you thought I would care.” I said. They all sighed.
And it was true. I was a spontaneous, wild, free young college student and I was almost always open to anything. Sure, sleeping in the car at 10 degrees might not be … ideal … sleeping conditions, but I was stoked nonetheless.
It was just as we were pulling into the parking lot, which was being plowed, that Emmett said quietly, “We’re stuck.”
The three of us in the back snapped out of our buzzed, chatty state, looking out the windows as most of us hadn’t realized we were even close to the mountain.
“Oh, fuuuuuck,” Colin let out.
The four of us begrudgingly crawled from under our blankets out of the car to land in over 12 inches of snow. I was wearing my go-to skiing L.L. Bean moccasin slippers. We started pushing, rocking, anything we could do to get the car out of the small ditch we were in. We put the tire mats down, we tried finding sand.
Three of us were pushing from the back, working with Emmett to somehow find a flow of rocking and pushing. I put my head down and pushed with what little upper arm strength I had when the ~great~ treading on my slippers gave way and I fell to my knees. I looked up and laughed out of relief; we were no longer stuck.
It was some ungodly hour in the morning at that point, and we all tried to close our eyes. What felt like 2 minutes later, we woke to our alarms and a frost-covered interior of the car. We cracked a window and couldn’t believe our eyes. It must have snowed at least another foot at that point.
We all excitedly got ready before even the first cars started pulling into the parking lot. We had slept in a car, there was no damn way we were missing first chair.
Frozen cliff bars and cold beer in hand, skis on our shoulders, and gators pulled up to our eyes, we made our way to the lift. We anxiously waited for the lifties to arrive. We were giddy and could not contain our stoke — there must have been at least two feet of powder, and word was that Loveland Pass and i70 were closed. Translation: We had the resort to ourselves with just the handful of people who made it through before the roads denied everyone else from the snow.
The ski patrollers arrived in their red jackets and started on the lift to do their checks as the line behind us grew, but not by much. I was lined up with Colin to go to first chair on Pallavicini’s ancient two-seater. The lifties came out of their hut and dropped the lines. It was finally time.
I dug into my pocket to grab my pass as they scanned Colin’s. My face dropped.
I left my pass in the car.
—
I feel like every skier has a good powder story; maybe even a handful of them. But its these moments, these stories, that trade in just a hobby for an obsession with making those deep powder turns, an intimacy with carving our edges into a white canvas, a love affair.
It’s the moment you hear hoot and hollering in the trees as your ride the lift up. It’s the sound of your own breath and the stillness of the snow when you have a face to yourself. It’s the relief of ripping down a groomer, just for fun. For some, it’s a way to get away from the rest of the world.
Yet it’s also the frustration when your goggles fog after tomahawking off a cliff. It’s the pain of your toes turning black in your boots. It’s the exasperation you feel waiting in the parking lot traffic of i70. It’s the itching feeling you get when you haven’t skied in more than a week.
With its ups and downs, skiing is more than a hobby, more than a sport. It’s a burning, deep, fiery passion that any true skier knows. These moments, good and bad, are what make skiing a love affair.